About MMOfan

Well first:
You CAN consider AH LCG a kind of continuing series ... you pay for like in an MMO.
AND punishing or frustrating the average player -for him/her- too much will simply mean ... you will loose that player.
So it is exactly like any other game series to hold that interest. That passion will be lost by frustrating play, be that too easy or too hard or well lousy designs...
Secondly:
My boardgame example came from that one card in EH that lets you loose that one victorious mission card you fought so hard for ... to simply take it OUT of your victory pile. Simple mechanic but dumb mechanic, which has nothing to do with your skills really. Just based on a card draw that punishes play without any other reason than make the game longer.
Third:
I am all for difficult games as Vanilla Diablo3 was an extreme hard game at launch (“we made it extremely hard and then DOUBLED it...”) and got flak for being too hard and too much influence for the Auction Houses, which btw was only GOLD in the hardcore game mode I played (instant death and loss of character, start from zero mode). So D3 turned after the departure of Pardo into a present day cake walk which is as bad or even worse than being too hard.
This all being said, I have not played this last AH cycle yet, but if it is really too frustrating I will think about buying extra cycles or not. I remember stopping LotR once too ... until they introduced easy mode, so I could CHANGE the modes to progress when I got stuck.
In conclusion AH LCG and LotR LCG stand both in the absolute top 10 of my gaming lists. Great games, but do not underestimate player frustrations. FFG have to earn their continued expansions.
Up to my personal playing experience I only found one bad AH expansion pack and that was the Labyrinth expansion. It was subpar in my 3 play throughs (1 in a group of 4 and 2 solo ones). The others were great to excellent.

I would like to know if the play mat for this game matches the world/maps of other recently published Terrinoth games like Runebound3 or Dragonholt.
If it shows the acual world I am more than interested.
Ty for an advice.

This cycle will be a breaking point for me and many others. I always bought the next episode but only play it when the full cycle is published.
So I will wait and see how good the game development will be in this expansion. I realise that with each new expansion the number of people actively following an LCG drops a bit, but in solo LCG’s that is not the problem. It is the quality of game play that counts for me and the added value.
I never thought the content was SO good in replayability so I will wait what players think about it after experiencing the content. I am in no rush. with dozens of replayable adventures both in LotR and AH.

I did not start this cycle yet. I only start when the full campaign is available and then finish that campaign as one huge adventure within a week or two.
So I can not comment in detail at all.
BUT it is often referred as bad game design when you punish a player too much. I remember Rob Pardo of Diablo3 and World of Warcraft fame saying this multiple times in an interview.
Reward should be a focus not punishment. A player will keep playing if he looses but still has the IMPRESSION he is rewarded any how. This applies to any game. And to a certain degree AH LCG respects this principle as you simply can run an ongoing adventure even when you have a R1 to R3 result.
Losing constantly things (like resources) in a massive way you fought for (and built up) is bad game design really. It is better to go for other constructive things that will motivate a player to do better.
That exactly is why I always put that punishing card in Eldritch Horror (the one where you need to reshuffle a victory card back) OUT of the game before we start playing. The dude who designed that card has no clue what drives people to have fun in games.

Great article. The strength of AH LCG is that it is less dependant on hardcore deck building then the excellent LotR, but make NO mistake in order to beat a specific scenario you need to tune your deck in detail.
AH eats from both walls really. Because thanks to the Campaign system your deck building is limited once you start a cycle, but at the other hand you are free to choose whatever you want in order to get that victory when playing for a win in a seperate adventure
We witnessed that in our 4 player Dunwich campaign with the Country Express and train ride to Dunwich. We failed and died 2 times in a fast and terrible way. So for our next session we agreed to try once more and if it doesn’t succeed take the loss and continue with all punishment involved... BUT before continuing with a loss we will play first with complete other tuned decks and even investigators to beat this thing.
You see having Harrisson the soldier tank along with what is supposed to be a quick fast paced clue hunt is not ideal...
tldr: super solo/coop LCG.
SUPERB game design.

AH 2nd edition is really old in 2018. I understand the old players who invested money and had a lot of fun with it over the last 13 years, but...
We played it with a group of 4 a few weeks ago and while 2 of us were really hardcore fans it did not convince me really, nor another player who never played AH or EH. A few days later I invited the new player to a 2 player game of EH ... and since then he continued playing EH.
I hope AH 3rd edition will upgrade a few mechanics like the too fiddly sliding of skills (oops my slider moved), the lack of specific individual end boss stories (as in EH) and frankly including the kind of stories told in AH the card game would be excellent.
The AH LCG also showed that these stories certainly do NOT hamper repeated play at all. It is odd we forget these sessions rather quickly after a few other plays/months.

We have a group of 4 that play once a month. Standard. It is great when you play a scenario nobody played or played too long ago to remember the details. In solo mode I played Standard for everything up to the end of Dunwhich cycle, including the stand alone adventures. I have played 46 times now and almost every session was super. I have all expansions but try to enjoy the game in spread quantities. For instance the Carcossa solo cycle will start in August at one adventure per week. By October I will restart the Dunwich cycle with another investigator etc...
3 remarks:
1. Playing with more players is as fun as playing solo for me. The only problem is that with 4 players you really need 3+ hours to finish it. In solo mode the adventure is over in 1 hour, which is perfect
2. The scenarios are very replayable. I never thought this was possible when I first started playing.
3. Standard mode is more than challenging enough. In harder modes (my thoughts) luck plays a major role.

At first I was excited, but ... I played this game again and frankly the Descent2 App offers more variey, challenge modes and well... content.
I guess a Delve Quest mode is not compatible with the Star Wars story telling adventures, but if I love story telling I think MoM2 is better than IA.
So my feeling is that IA is falling between these 2 other excellent App driven games.
I would recommend FFG to make an App for Star Wars : Rebellion instead. That game needs a solo expansion.

I already stored the adventure set cards in special collection boxes with vertical dividers for both LotR and AH LCG. The player cards are kept in card binders within a map so I can build decks with ease.
I found no use for this FFG box. So for the moment I stored the AH stand alone adventures in them with original plastic packaging. But frankly this box is so akward I don’t see its functionality at all if you use standard storing boxes.
I only purchased this advanced version of the basic box for the few player cards. Not interested in yet more challenges of the same basic adventures.

Thanks to Jayelbird for solving our groups mystery. It has been posted on BGG too.
As I stated over there, perhaps they could have added to the card text that it was not a normal asset but a “location asset” and so everyone in the room could use it. In this case the card asset mentioned that when the original investigator was killed, the card passes to another investigator was even more confusing than it should be.

Well according to our rules laywer, ONLY one investigator that gets the card can trigger the ability through an action. Now if that investigator has only one clue left, he can only switch HIS clues to doom tokens. It even says that if that investigator dies, another investigator gets that particular card.
While indeed you can switch a clue to a doom, that investigator needs to have the number of clues in his possession.
In our case that investigator blocked us all for not being able to fulfill the 11 doom requirements in time.
That’s a TERRIBLE twist for playing a 4 hours game.

I am talking about the Scenario A in The Labyrinths of Lunacy. Single group play.
We made it all through the last stage of this quest. And before turning the last Act card, we had to come up with 11 Doom tokens along with the Agenda turning at 7 Doom (so 4 extra Dooms).
So … the only possible way to win was having 4 extra Dooms that could be reached by turning 4 Clue tokens. BUT …. Apparently the card that stated this, mentioned that it could ONLY be done by ONE investigator who obtained the card to do so.
This was NOT mentioned before. So the investigator who came in the possession of the card had only … one clue token and so game over...
Which is a ridiculous way to waste 4 hours of playing. I find this "tric" rather ridiculous and a clear error in game design.